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Talk: 19890607-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-come_what_may_seeing_come_what_may_doing-1569 Leandra Tejedor (1).json Start_time: 01:19:26 Display_question: It seems paradoxical to have a goal of calmness, and yet at the same time being able to allow restlessness. Keyword_search: calmness, restlessness, goal, energy, agitation, mind, resistance, mindfulness, attentive, egotistical, compassionate, nonviolent, sensitivity, angry Question_content: Questioner: Alive in that question is a paradoxical question about wanting calmness, and yet at the same time being able to allow restlessness, and lack of calm. After all, the goal is to become calm. Larry: Yes. Questioner: We try to…that's what we want to get to. Larry: Yes. Questioner: Yet at the same time you're saying if the goal is too strong, we're going to push away the restlessness. Larry: It depends. Fine. Let's say you just told me you want to be calm. Fine. That may bring you here, it may give you the energy motivate you to practice, so I wouldn't want to weaken that. It's not so much… that isn't the problem, but what do you actually do, in a given moment? Now in a given moment, let's say there is agitation. Real calm can come from fully experiencing what it's like to be agitated. In fact, I don't know if you can get to it, any other way. A kind of calm that is really trustworthy, that is not caused by a kind of mind game, but actually, and that's of course, we're now doing the work of wisdom, is insight into fully being mindful of agitation, and all kinds of other states. And of course, what the calm comes out of the understanding, of the agitation. Break_line: If there's resistance to being agitated, which is of course what we have, then you go to the resistance, you see how much you hate being agitated, and it's relaxing. There's a flow of mindfulness, so that it becomes much more continuous. And the truth is, that if you want to get calm, the best way to get it is, to learn how to be with what's there. Whereas what I was getting at is if, let's say you're agitated, and then let's say half of your energy, or a portion of your energy is on the agitation, and another part is… in the books, they say that if you pay attention to agitation, some of the energy falls away, and then you become… so you're watching it, and also you're looking for results. That's what I meant. It's like pulling a plant up to see if it's growing, pulling it out of the ground. So that what really helps the calm, can you be 100% agitation mind? And that's what we're learning. It turns out it's not a problem if you can be totally mindful of agitation. Break_line: First of all, you can't be totally attentive, and also be egotistical about it. If you're totally attentive, then I and mine, the momentum of I and mine, naturally is brushed away. You can't do both at the same time. Sometimes, one of the ways in which the practice gets turned around, comes out of hopelessness. You kind of throw up your hand and say, my God, I'm trying to be nonviolent, and I'm trying to be calm, and I'm trying to be compassionate. And then you keep seeing how you're violent, and how you're agitated, and so forth. At a certain point, you just say it's too much. All these things that are pouring out of the mind, and in that, giving up, can be a moment of just fully experiencing, okay, so there's violence in your heart right now, so what of it? What's wrong with that? But again, it's not just condoning it, it's can there be sensitivity to it, feeling it as. This is what it feels like to be angry. This is what human beings feel like, when they're really angry, or have violence in their heart, and this is what this particular human being feels, right now. End_time: 01:23:06
